MARCH 3–DARMSTADT, Germany – Merck KGaA announced today that the company will focus its planning efforts for a new large-scale production plant for therapeutic proteins in Jena, located in the German State of Thuringia.

For Merck KGaA, the selection of the Jena site represents a first major step towards the largest single investment in the company’s 335-year history. Merck intends to use the planned facility – which requires an investment of about $300 million and should create some 260 new jobs as well as 20 trainee positions – to manufacture the latest generation of biologic cancer treatments. However, the basic decision to build the plant has yet to be made.

“The decision to select Jena as a location for the planned investment was not an easy one,” says Bernhard Scheuble, chairman of Merck’s executive board. “The high level of enthusiasm and pro-fessionalism of our contacts in Thuringia, as well as the prospective financial support of about 30 percent of the total investment tipped the scales in the end.”

“We are proud that Thuringia has again won an international competition for such a forward-looking investment,” Bernhard Vogel, Thuringia’s prime minister. “Beyond supporting the actual investment itself, we also have offered Merck attractive terms and conditions that extend to professional qualifications for new employees in the region.”

Franz Schuster, Thuringia’s economics minister, added that the new plant will bring a key technology in oncology to Thuringia.

“This definitely should attract further investors,” he says.

A number of countries, including Singapore, Taiwan, Spain, the USA, Switzerland and Ireland, took part in the fierce international competition to win the planned production plant. After internal evaluation, two US sites – Durham, N.C. and Billerica, Mass. joined Jena on the final short list.